Evening reception music must-haves?

On our list so far we have got:

- Don't Stop me Now by Queen

- Don't Stop Believing by The Journey

- I Gotta Feeling by Black Eyed Peas

- Livin' on a Prayer by Bon Jovi

x

I'm a huge 50's / 60's / motown fan so ours is going to be full of that, but we're leaving our favourite songs with the dj and letting him put them in as he pleases - we know this kinda music isn't to everyones taste so we're going to have lots of other kinds of music in between as we want everyone to feel like they can dance and enjoy themselves otherwise our playlist with just be like a dreamboats and petticoats soundtrack lol

These are all popular tracks. Its hard to recommend tracks unless you know what people are into. If I meet a couple to discuss their wedding, I often do the "Abba Test'", ie talking about music and throw Abba as an example. I either get a look of horror or "oh yes!", that often starts the direction for the night.

I get some couples who want a complete ban on Abba, and some who "embrace the cheese" :-)

I'm always happy to go with their wishes, and simply offer advice from my experience, so I guess I can list 101 party hits, but will then hear that the OP wants something completely different.

For couples that don't really have any preferences, I can send some previous playlists supplied by other couples. Its often more important to list what you don't want.

Occasionally, I'll get a list where its obvious they felt they needed to provide something rather than listing a few important tracks and leaving me to use my experience.

As a general rule;

Soul/Motown mainly works very well.

Many guests will enjoy some good classics from the 90s and 80s.

Rihanna continues to work well, and some modern chart can work for most guests

Rock and Roll - varies with the guests.

Abba - a bit marmite, but loved by many Aunts!

But, I've had nights where Trance, House Music, SKA and Rap have all worked very well. This will have been previously been discussed with the couple.

The days of a DJ just turning up and playing their own taste in music is gladly over, I'm finding more and more couples want input into this area of their day and its a good direction for the industry as we are then more valued as a service provider.

If you like Motown then....Shhboom!! This is going to be our walk back up the aisle music!! : )

We're in the fortunate (haha) position of owning our own dance company complete with full sound kit and lighting rig, so we always knew we'd do our own set up and playlist. Beginning to regret it slightly though as DJing a dance night (and by that I mean partner dancing for ceroc / salsa / modern jive etc) is VERY different to a 'normal' night - for a start, all of our usual music is within set bpm parameters! We don't want to accidentally fill the night with our favourite / known most popular dance tracks, for them to be relatively unknown to non-dancers!

My favourite sort of music is r&b/hip hop but I'll happily dance along to some pop, indie music, bit of rock, love motown etc. I absolutely hate Abba so will be saying under pain of death play that to the DJ.

Why don't you have a look at some of the Now albums to get an idea of popular songs? Throw in some 80s/90s classics then a few old ones? I'd look at compilation albums and see what's on them.

We're planning on having a wee happy hardcore set randomly later on in the night but only cos we both used to love it and it makes us laugh.

You might find my play list and banned list slightly strange, but here goes:

Anything from before the 90s is banned (so that includes all 60s, 70s and 80s). All indie and rock are also banned.

The first two hours will be current commercial pop, dance and RnB.

The next hour will be 90s dance classics (so Snap - Rhythm is a dancer, Baby D - Let me be your fantasy etc)

The next hour will be year 2000 onwards dance/trance classics (so 4Strings - Take me away, Delerium - Silence, Tiesto - Adagio for Strings, Matt Darey - Beautiful, Freefall - Skydive, Spoiled & Zigo - More, Agnelli & Nelson - Everytime and more etc etc)

The remainder of the night will be mild electro house, DnB and Dubstep (so Chase and Status, Nero, Subfocus, DJ Fresh, Martin Solveig, Sander Van Doorn etc)

Most of you won't know half of those songs and DJ/artists but I love them and most of the people at my wedding will be similar age to me and into the same music (so late 20s to mid 30s). The older people may have a shock, but I just can't stand 60s, 70s and 80s. It makes me want to crawl the walls. One DJ I have spoken to has tried to convince me to have it, but I really do hate it. I'm not looking forward to trying to find a DJ and I am going to have to supply a vast majority of the music. Ah well. That's what happens when you have such specific taste I guess.

Anyone know of any good wedding DJs in South Wales?

Ha, the "ABBA test" made me laugh as I was thinking earlier the first thing I'd want to say when booking a DJ is no ABBA!

My other half is a DnB DJ and produces some Dubstep. He wated to do an hour set at the end of the night but I really can't imagine my Nan one foot skanking on the dancefloor! So it's a big no. lol.

I love any sort of music. There will have to be some 70s/80s classics, a bit of SKA, 90's classics, indie, RnB and of course we will have to finish with some Frank Sinatra.

We aren't having an evening reception because we're having the wedding breakfast at 6ish in the hope that everyone (mainly the kids) can enjoy the beautiful sunshine that we WILL be having! Plus neither of us are 'disco' people anyway.

If we had gone the disco route I would have something from probably every decade 60s/70s/80s disco to get everyone up for a boogie, some songs you can have a sing to, the slushy ones to smooch to and plenty of 'background' type music to enable people to fill up their glasses at the bar or powder their nose!

There would also be some anthems from my school years like Cmon' Eileen & Blame it on the Boogie! Plus some good old rock, some motown, Tina Turner/Rod Stewart (for my mother!)

As a slight aside starting to think about ceremony music which is proving difficult because everything we find has a religious slant & OH has just suggested the bloody Wurzles! ? My Mother would love that - not!

Lol Graceyfly, yours sounds as eclectic as ours!

We've started compiling a list but it really is off the top of our head and I'm working on my work computer so haven't even opened my own laptop with itunes collection on - bound to be literally hundreds on there I've fogotten about!

We've got 53 songs so far, which is likely to be nearly all we need anyway, but it already includes Beatles, Beach Boys, The Ramones, Etta James, Nina Simone, Norah Jones, The Wannadies, Pulp, James, Bon Jovi, Bryan Adams, Lady Gaga, Queen, Jason Mraz, Adele, Elton John, Lloyd, Black Eyed Peas, Counting Crows, Plan B, Divine Comedy, Eliza Doolittle, The Foundations, Ceelo Green.... and more. So fairly chilled but quite a random mix. I've been banned by OH from ska (which we both love, but our guests don't) and Garbage as not being 'weddingy', boo hiss!

Excellent taste! ?

I would add Summer of 69 to that list as a must-have for me. Our evening do was in two parts - the first part had a jazz band who mostly played jazz classics (we requested Misty, Fever, Dream a Little Dream and Ain't That a Kick in the Head and they just picked the rest) and then the second part was cheesy disco stuff in the bar. Neither of us are big fans of any particular music genre so we mostly went for classic 80s/90s/00s stuff that people would know and love. Only one ABBA song though!

Lol we have no Abba on the playlist so far, but are not against a good bit of cheese ? We're vaguely attempted to only have one track per artist, but struggling slightly with some!

We asked our guests to include 3 favourite song choices with their RSVP with the disclaimer that we couldn't promise, but would do our best to use at least one of their choices. We've managed so far for all but one person who only put one song choice down and we HATE it - sure she only put one down to try and force us into using it but it's 'I Am The Musicman' and this is not a child's birthday party!!

Lol no to ABBA from me but I bet h2b would say yes lol. We have stuff on our list such as

Michael Buble- feeling good

McFly- various as we're both big fans

Take That- Never Forget our first dance will probably be Greatest Day too

Elbow- One Day Like This

I'd forgotten about this tbh need to start thinking about it again. Probably going to cheat and ask for requests from the guests on the invites too x

Haha Ali, love it, you genius!

MiL2b is on the phone to OH, dithering about her song choices and OH stupidly mentioned that his Aunt's choice (his mum's sister) is being ignored on the basis it is ridiculous (that's the musicman one) and she's getting uppity about people not enjoying the music. Well, if they won't enjoy it anyway, might throw a few ska tracks in there anyway! Argh!

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OH has banned it!

I'm having great fun going through my itunes library - talk about reliving my teenage years! What is seriously depressing is that OH - who is 6 years younger than me - hasn't heard of such classics like 'Children of The Night', 'No Limit', 'Doop' and the other early 90's cheese! Admittedly I don't actually want them at the wedding, but he's making me feel really old!